In this article we will share 10 best free marketing ideas for small businesses. If you are looking for out of the box, innovative promotional ideas for marketing, this is the article for you. Many small businesses face money shortages from time to time. Even if you don’t have tons of money to spend on your marketing, you can still find ways to appeal to your existing clients and find new ones. There are many free marketing ideas out there you can use to boost your small business and hit your target KPIs with close to zero investments.
With free tactics, you have to place emphasis on the most important things such as your copy and visuals. One place to find inspiration are premium file libraries where you can find amazing authentic images to give you an idea of the types of visuals that can help you promote your business.
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Here are our 10 best free marketing ideas for small businesses:
1. Know your audience and how to appeal to them
If you really want to reach as many people as you can for free and appeal to them, you should thoroughly research your target audience. A scrupulous research on your clients is the first step to boosting your marketing efforts. It will allow you to understand how your products might be useful for your potential customers – and create your content and marketing projects accordingly.
The one mistake many businesses often do is misunderstanding the difference between target market and target audience. While these notions are related, target market is a broader concept than target audience. To really know the latter, you should find out interests and behaviour patterns of people you target with your existing marketing strategy. This might become a game-changer for a small business since you can better channel all your marketing activity in the short and long term.
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2. Pay more attention to local SEO
This doesn’t apply for small online businesses that can ship worldwide and don’t focus on local markets. However, if your company has any connection to your location, you can leverage it and get a competitive advantage. Instead of optimizing your website for general SEO and getting lost among your bigger field competitors, you can focus on local search engine optimization.
Google tracks users’ location when they search for things. Identifying specific keywords instead of more general ones and including your city or area can revolutionize your marketing efforts and win over non-local competitors. If your website is well-optimized for SEO (which is free and easy to do yourself), you increase your chances of bringing in new clients.
3. Work with hashtags (wisely)
You should brainstorm on social media marketing ideas for small business. Hashtags on social media platforms play a crucial role in generating new leads. However, they can also backfire if you have a poor strategy with your hashtags. Using too many hashtags and adding irrelevant ones to your posts might add a messy look to your publications and even push away your potential customers.
You should be very careful when adding hashtags to your posts. Research trending hashtags and topics on Instagram and Twitter and add relevant keywords to your posts. It’s okay to include several hashtags in Instagram posts, but you should stop with one or two with Twitter. Remember that people who search for tags and are not your clients yet will see your posts that include the keywords (read 12 campaign ideas to raise awareness for more tips).
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4. Try new content formats on social media
Content is the most important thing in your marketing strategy because it makes you different from your competitors. You should try to create and post several types of content in order to appeal to different people and add value to your brand.
Sure, social media ads are cost-effective compared to traditional offline marketing efforts such as ads on billboards or TV ads. However, if you are really short on your budget, you can always try to promote your social media organically and for free. Make sure your content is valuable and interesting for your target audience and post with a good frequency to see more engagement and conversions. Keep in mind that even a single post on Facebook can become viral.
5. Cool Promotional Event Ideas: Contests and giveaways
Contests and giveaways are a proven way to boost engagement on social media platforms since they generate interest in your product and bring more traffic to your platforms. People really love free stuff and actively participate in giveaways, which might become a significant advantage for your small business.
Running contests and giveaways usually doesn’t cost you any extra money (except for gifting someone your product). They also allow you to attract new and potential customers. New people get to try your products or services when they win them, and if they enjoy them, there is a high chance that they will become your loyal clients in the future.
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6. Shoot videos of your products
This is probably the best free marketing idea for small business owners in this article. You have to pay to distribute your content on Facebook even to your followers. Twitter doesn’t show all your tweets to all of your followers. Youtube not only distribute your content to all of your subscribers, it also distribute your videos to other people who might find it interesting. On top of that Youtube pays you if you have a decent subscriber base.
Video accounts for more than 60% of all global internet traffic. In general, people prefer videos over text content, and more and more social media users are fascinated with different video content types such as Instagram stories, short films, and how-to videos. You can surely see more engagement if you add videos to your content strategy and polish up your YouTube channel.
Don’t be afraid to shoot DIY-videos with your own smartphone. You might think that users don’t like unprofessional videos, but your audience will actually appreciate your efforts. Before they make a decision to purchase, many customers want to see products in a real and authentic way instead of fancy and polished images.
7. Ask for feedback
How do you build trust around your brand? The easiest way is having a place where people can see feedback and reviews from your satisfied clients. For example, you can create a page on your website dedicated to such content, or add Instagram stories highlights to your profile with feedback. It is helpful for your small business because it might significantly improve your sales.
For many, positive reviews play an important role in their final decision to buy something. Lots of internet users search for such feedback themselves, and it gets suspicious when they can’t find one. That’s why it’s a good idea to reach out to your loyal clients and ask them to provide feedback and reviews based on their experience with your brand.
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8. Testing livestream
When you have a limited budget, you tend to search for unconventional content ideas you can implement for free. One of them is streaming online events and creating your own livestreams. They are popular with social media users and highly engaging. For example, Instagram even notifies users when an account they follow starts a livestream, which means there’s a higher chance they will see your live event and click on it.
You can also research other platforms for streaming live videos. The choice of a platform mostly depends on your target audience and your aims and goals as a business. For instance, if you have a small store with comics, games, and geek souvenirs, you can use Twitch for livestreams since it has your perfect audience. Or you can stream on YouTube as it is a very popular platform with more users than any social media platform.
9. Start a blog
Both big and small companies actively blog these days because content marketing is an inexpensive way to generate traffic and new leads. Blogging can help you improve your brand image, share your professional expertise as a small business, appeal to your potential clients with relevant and useful content, and eventually bring more traffic to your website.
You don’t need to invest into a customized blog and spend tons of money on a custom design. Instead, you can use platforms like Medium or even start a free blog with WordPress. Blogs are a popular channel for sharing business insights and stories on entrepreneurial journeys. If your content is interesting and valuable for your readers, they will surely be interested to visit your website and social media platforms.
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10. Create an online community around your brand
Social media communities have become a marketing trend this year. In 2020, many users want a more personal experience than simply following a brand. They want to be a part of an online community, and exchange their ideas and experiences with other like-minded people. That’s why businesses create private Facebook groups or chats in different messengers to form communities around their brands.
Social media communities work especially well for small businesses. Creating a group or a chat will help you establish trust-worthy relationships with your clients and network with them in an unconventional and private way, and also teach you a lot about their needs.
Final thoughts
2020 has been one of the hardest years in recent history. With months of self-isolations and restrictions, it’s not a head-scratcher why many businesses faced a decrease in sales and saw less engagement than ever. It’s been especially hard for small companies, and it is not clear when these unstable economic times will end.
However, even in the midst of crisis, you can adapt, rethink your marketing strategy, and find free ideas you can implement in order to survive as a business. When all of this is over, you will be stronger than ever as a company.